First part: Sweet Dreams.
Eyes rested upon the young man's sleeping body, visually tearing him apart as if he were their prey, lurking from the darkness of his own mind. But then, with a blow like a door slamming shut, he woke up.
Opening his eyes, he was greeted with anxiety and a sense of fear, almost palpable. The redhead sweated cold drops and looked cautiously around.
With a quick survey of his surroundings, he soon realized he was in the sky and, being rather quiet by nature, he was amazed by the beauty of the place. Clouds floated both above and below him, while the wind blew gently in that curious world.
In the distance, he spotted a door on a small stone mound. Interestingly, beneath the door, there was another exactly the same, but turned around?
"It must be some kind of mirror," he mentioned, looking up and down. Although the clouds seemed the same in both directions, he didn't see his reflection.
"It's... Quite artistic, actually," said Andrew, assuming he was stranded in the middle of a dream. But calmness couldn't fully reach his body, and a gust of wind, hinting at the opening of the door, made its presence felt.
With a creaking sound, as if it were very old and poorly cared for, the door swung open wide, revealing its interior. Thousands of shadows were present, indistinguishable, but one of them approached the exit.
Using his hands, he held onto the door frame to enter the world of the mirror and escape its darkness, revealing his long hair. The tone of it and the freckles on his face were similar to those of the protagonist, but with a much thinner, delicate, and effeminate complexion.
The extravagant figure was without any clothing, but there were no signs of reproductive organs, nor gender. With delicacy, it took a few steps down from the tumult of earth, moving almost a meter away from the door. At no time did it look away from Andrew. The light illuminated their pale face and showed their shiny hair as they emerged from the utmost darkness through the frame from which they came.
Suddenly, the door closed again, leaving behind the mystery of who the other beings inside it were, and with that, arose the question of what young Andrew was facing.
Staring at each other, he noticed that the figure had cracks along its body and eyes without pupils, leaving only irises of different shades of green.
"Who are you?" he asked, but with a certain hint of unease. And yet, he received no response. The gazes remained fixed, and Andrew pondered how he could confront the intruder.
"Where are we?" He asked a new question, again receiving no answer other than a gust of wind deafening him and a group of dense clouds obscuring his view of his companion.
It was as if the strange person sucked everything around them. It was swift; the clouds came quickly, and as quickly as they came, they were gone.
The stranger, little by little, could be seen through the clouds again, from their legs, which appeared thicker than they were before, to their torso, which similarly seemed more robust, until their face was observed. It was an identical copy of Andrew.
"What are you?" he asked now with a concerned expression in his voice, stepping back a couple of steps from his companion.
The response, despite not being aggressive or intimidating, left a hole in his stomach, making his eyes wide. "Who are you?" was what it said, even imitating the tone of the redhead's voice.
Andrew's first reaction was to try to wake up by pinching his arm, but things wouldn't end here. Grotesquely, the body of his duplicate began to suck itself, leaving behind an image that would probably never leave the freckled man's head. And with it, likewise, a new body began to emerge from the accumulation of flesh.
This time, it was a woman. Before he could observe her closely, the noise of the train sounded loudly in his head. The ground turned black, causing him to fall precipitously and wake up abruptly in the process.
Second part: The Family.
He woke up abruptly but calmly, spending a few seconds staring at the roof, contemplating reality.
"What the heck was that?" he said to himself as he got out of bed.
The clock read 01:27. The number strangely left him with a sense of déjà vu.
The room was a complete mess, books strewn everywhere, along with papers and portraits of people. Portfolios containing information on police cases were scattered on the floor, and there was a pair of pants from which a cigarette protruded from the pocket.
Andrew took the cigarette and lit it with a match as he listened to the last sounds of the train passing by his house through the window, observing the peak of land transport in those times. The tram passed by quickly.
He was overwhelmed by sleep, and he glanced at his notebook, which was on a small bedside table accompanied by a flashlight, a pen, and an inkwell.
There was no other choice; he had to unravel the mysteries, so, leaving the cigarette halfway, he quickly sat down to put his thoughts into prose, ending with a portrait of what he had observed of the woman trying to piece together her face.
"This makes no sense," he murmured after an hour of trying, as he got up from his seat, glancing sideways at the portrait he had made, of the woman with short hair and fine eyes. He stored information in his memory prodigiously, but he couldn't assimilate the appearance of that woman, which bothered him the most about that dream.
Leaving his room, he quickly headed to the bathroom to wash his face and, with it, his thoughts. But, as he looked at himself in the mirror, he couldn't help but remember the disgusting things his own body did in his dreams, giving him incurable nausea. The night would end in this way, with immense mental heaviness and vomitive insomnia.
The morning would wake him from his trance with the first noises of Maria and Manuel wandering around the house.
In the middle of the hallway, his roommate's gaze settled on him. A tall Spaniard with dark brown hair as dark as his coffee-colored eyes, Manuel, 23, was a literature enthusiast and had a couple of scripts written around. Additionally, to make a living, he worked as a waiter in a cafe from 7 am to 3 pm, representing one of the few significant ties in our protagonist's life. "Holy smokes, buddy. You had quite a night! I kept hearing your bed moving all night long," Manuel mentioned with a tone of humor mixed with curiosity as he sipped some coffee from his cup. "Did you finally manage to charm one of your beautiful coworkers? Emma's going to be jealous," he said sarcastically, as he moved away from Andrew to stand by the window and watch people start their day.
His roommate showed an expression that couldn't go unnoticed by the redhead, a gesture that involved the inclination of his distinctive mustache, which he found ridiculous. It amused him to observe it. "Someone seems to have too much free time. You should work extra hours so we can fix the bathroom pipes. Because later, Maria's going to 'echarnos la bronca,'" he responded to his Spanish friend's comments.
To his joy, for a few moments, thanks to his friend's jokes and insinuations, the shadows of the mysterious dream that had tormented him all night were temporarily pushed away, finally achieving a momentary respite.
From the kitchen, the sound of someone preparing breakfast could be heard, as these two young men did not inhabit the house alone together. Rather, they were being watched, protected, and under the protective wing of the mother of the charismatic Spaniard, a woman around 40 years old, but maintaining the energy, beauty, and youth of her twenties, endowed with a genuinely strong personality.
"Exactly, 'echarles la bronca' is what I'm going to do to both of you, 'Ostia!' What time is this to get up? And you, Manuel, 'venga ya. Dejate de pringaderas,' you're probably already terrorizing your poor coworkers at the café," said Maria, as she hurried through the living room. She spoke in Spanish, but the boys understood her perfectly.
Manuel sighed before heading into the bathroom. "Next time you bring a woman, be quieter," he yelled through the walls of the bathroom.
Observing what would be his family, a smile spread across the redhead's face, without commenting on what was happening. The unease had completely disappeared at this moment.
They wasted no time in starting breakfast like a normal family, but while Manuel kept devouring bread, Andrew seemed bewildered as he spread butter, as the noise of the train reminded him of what had happened the previous night. As they finished the meal, a judgmental look was cast from Maria to the cadet.
"If you want, have seconds. The cadet job surely has you exhausted. It shows in your eyes! Young man, sleep, for God's sake! You have three months' worth of market bags hanging under your eyes!" she suggested, referring to the freckled man, unaware that he hadn't slept due to other circumstances.
The noise of the train would pass quickly this time, just like breakfast. Now, everyone had to attend to their duties. After the meal, Maria continued with the household chores.
And the young men set out to fulfill their daily tasks, with Manuel heading to his job at the café and Andrew dedicating his time to report to the Nottingham police station. Although the sensation of that strange dream still orbited around the redhead's head, the everydayness of the day seemed to have a calming effect.